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Work more efficiently but sleep well, train resilience & anti-stress strategies for mental health, use psychology mindfulness & emotional intelligence to relax

Simone Janson, Simone Janson, Simone Janson

• Publisher: Best of HR – Berufebilder.de®
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9783965964778
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Anti-stress training for the chronically overworked: 5 tips for more resilience
// By Mario Hahn

Are you part of the overworked society, despite working from home? Stress is already considered hip today. If you still don't feel like it, here are five simple tips for general wellbeing.

Modern man - a victim of the overworked society?

Have you also become a victim of the stressed society and are you also one of the permanently overemployed? Are you always on the move and available to God and the world around the clock? Especially now, at a time when the boundaries between work and home are becoming increasingly blurred, many people feel extremely stressed due to the new circumstances that were triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Home Office For many working people, this means that the workload is often fulfilled outside of the contractually agreed working hours: E-mails are answered and calls received without interruption, even at times that we should use for leisure activities or look after our families. All the good advice from health experts doesn't fit in with our daily lives at the moment.

Permanent availability - a blessing and a curse at the same time

At first glance, this permanent availability appears to be exemplary for employers, but it also has a stale aftertaste. Because instead of increasing productivity, the “overemployed society” can also do exactly the opposite. A recently published Harvard Business Review report found that excessive Willingness to work, on-call service and availability causes tremendous stress on those affected and distracts from our real goals. In some cases, this can even lead to burnout.

Now what steps can you take to escape this trap, if it is you who have been plagued by the "overworked society"? Being busy doesn't mean you have to be effective.

5 tips against stress and excessive demands

The following recommendations have been developed by various experts so that you may be less busy and available, but more effective and more successful.

1. Enjoy every single day of your vacation

It may sound really ridiculous at times, but many of us are no longer even able to take all of the vacation rights we are entitled to. Unfortunately, in many cases this has already become a reality. In 2018, for example, the job exchange website Glassdoor found that the average UK worker consumes only 62% of their annual vacation entitlement, with four in ten adults taking less than half of that.

But that's not enough: Of those who consume their vacation entitlement in full, around a quarter of those people still checked their emails regularly for fear of not conforming to the job.

However, with a little personal planning and organization, it is possible to completely avoid many of these activities while on vacation. In this article, we present you with four guidlines that employees on vacation should absolutely follow in order to overcome the vacation culture that has already crept in.

• Plan your vacation well in advance and let all your co-workers and supervisors know that you will not be available during this time.
• Write a good, automatic one Out of office notice for your incoming e-mails and appoint a colleague who can represent you if you have urgent questions.
• Let your colleagues know which projects you are currently working on and where the important points expected during your absence will occur - a few minutes of tips and training will save you a lot of stress and hectic in the long run.
• Switch off your phone as soon as your vacation has started and consciously go offline!

2. Stop checking your phone all the time

The phone rings, buzzes, beeps or vibrates and we pick it up immediately. An automatism that has already passed into our blood. Most notifications, however, are unimportant, mostly announcements from the addictive social media from distant friends. Even if we only spend a few seconds looking at the mobile phone, this process can lead to subsequent actions that were not actually planned by you. In a recent report it was estimated that we are about daily three hours and 15 minutes with and in front of our phones, and much of it is determined to be nonessential and unnecessary.

However, increased use of the telephone can also lead to other behavioral problems, for example anxiety states have been observed in some people, and posture changes as a result of using our smartphones for too long. In some cases it was even found that the respiratory performance of various hard-core users was influenced, because one bad posture and infrequent oxygen supply to the brain lead to stress. Therefore, the longer we scroll, the worse we feel.

In order to provide a quick remedy, all types of notifications should be deactivated on your mobile phones. Because most of the things we do on our phones are not good for our health. We are usually magically drawn to social media, addicting games, and alarming news. It stands to reason that if we really only allow the most important notifications, we don't look at our cell phones so often and do unproductive things.

If you are having difficulty performing these self-protection measures yourself, there are many tools that can help you with this. It may sound ironic, but there is Apps that stop youto use other apps. If you can reduce your phone usage by as little as 25%, you will soon see how much more extra time you have gained and how much less you will feel "busy".

3. Check your e-mails only twice a day

Part of our addiction to these mobile devices lies in their ability to constantly provide us with news and other content and thus attract our attention. Because of this, many of us are constantly updating our social media feeds to stay current and see the latest posts anytime, anywhere. We feel a brief moment of joy, similar to the feeling we get from winning at one, for example Online casino game get.

E-mails are another driving force behind our dependence on mobile devices; we constantly check the inbox for new messages. Our self-imposed attitude to work forces us to check our e-mails several times a day, even if the probability that a new important message has arrived is low. In addition, we reply to unimportant e-mails and overlook the actual importance of other information.

Let us resolve to check our emails only twice a day. Many experts swear by this rule and can therefore concentrate on more productive tasks for the rest of the time. And you always stay up to date. A friend Personal development guru even posits that you shouldn't check your e-mail in the morning, and gives seven reasons why you should wait until after lunch to do this.

One thing is certain: the less time we spend digging through unimportant emails, the less stressed and busy we will be and the more time we have for the most important things.

4. Practice mindfulness

Many people roll their eyes at the catchphrase "meditation": Isn't this just done by the hippies? And doesn't it take a lot of time when nothing is actually being done?

Exactly the opposite is the case, because in view of the ever-increasing demands of a busy working life, which affects more and more people worldwide, millions of people consider meditation as a fixed point for daily relaxation.

Mindfulness practice is a popular form of meditation that only lasts a few minutes and can be easily done in a comfortable chair or in your own bed. Take a deep breath and concentrate on your surroundings: notice the sounds, take a close look at your surroundings and take in the smells that surround you.

According to the common expert opinion, stress can be reduced in a very short time without much action. So if you're torn back and forth and don't know which is left or right, take a few minutes and practice that Mindfulness Meditation.

5. Learn to say "no"

“Overemployment” is often a direct result of what is known as the “yes-man culture”. We don't want to disappoint other people, let them down or appear uncooperative. That's why we always agree to help with other tasks or to take on unproductive work that could actually be done by other people.

But refusing a task or a request doesn't always have to be offensive. If You effectively say no, this can even increase your standing with others, because it is you who appear focused and efficient. This is another way of building respect.

Take this advice seriously and try to stick to it. And after a while, you will see how these changes did you good. You will find that you have made more time for yourself and your loved ones, and as you follow these tips above, you will find that "constant readiness" doesn't necessarily have to dominate your life after all.

Closing Remarks

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